The Call to Evangelize

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This morning, I want us to start with a video in just a moment about the subject of evangelism. And it’s a video that was put together by a man who was an atheist at the time. As far as I know, as of yesterday, he was still an atheist, a pretty vocal atheist. As a matter of fact, I watched the video a few times to make sure there was no language in it, because I’m familiar with this guy’s act.

He’s a well-known magician. But he provides a perspective on evangelism that honestly is more in line with what the Bible teaches than what sometimes we practice as believers. Now, he’ll use the word proselytizing, proselytism.

That’s a word that gets used in secular realms where we would use the word evangelize. So when you hear that word, just understand that’s what he’s talking about is evangelizing, evangelism, sharing the gospel. But this is a little over a minute long, and I want you to hear what he has to say as we get started this morning.

He was really kind and nice and sane and looking in the eyes and talking. And then gave me this Bible. And I’ve always said, you know, that I don’t respect people who go across the place.

I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven in hell and people could be going to hell or not getting the turn of wine or whatever, and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward. And atheists, that people should proselytize, just leave me alone, keep your religion to yourself.

How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believe, you know, or shut up without, that a truck was coming in and you didn’t believe it, that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle him.

And this is more important than that. And I always thought that, and I’ve written about that, I’ve found it conceptual. This guy was a really good guy. He was polite and honest and sane, and he cared enough about me to proselytize and give me a Bible.

So what he’s talking about there, is one night after one of his shows, I think in Vegas, not that it matters, but a man who had really enjoyed his act, stayed behind as he meets with his fans, and had stayed behind and was very complimentary. This is part of a longer video. I cut it down because we didn’t need to see the whole thing this morning.

But he talks about how the man was very genuinely complimentary. It wasn’t empty, flattery. He really appreciated the man’s work.

And in the midst of their very brief conversation, he talks about how the man handed him a Gideon’s Bible that had some things inscribed in the front that he had written down about how to have eternal life, about how to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and had given him contact information. And the man goes on to say, you know, I still don’t believe there’s a God. I still don’t believe.

But he recognized that for somebody to be willing to share the gospel with him because he believes that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation is not a hateful thing. It’s actually an expression of love that if we as believers actually believe that there’s a heaven and hell. And if we actually believe what it is Jesus taught about those things, then the most loving thing we can do is share the gospel with somebody.

And this man, as a committed atheist, said, for those who believe those things, and then I don’t want to share my faith because I don’t want to upset anybody. I don’t want to make it awkward. I don’t want to be offensive.

He says, I have no respect for that. Even as somebody who doesn’t believe, he says, how much do you have to hate somebody? That video, he put that video out about 15 years ago.

And I remember seeing it then. And it has stuck in the back of my mind. it’s one of those things that rattles around in my mind and has for years, whenever I think of missed opportunities or whenever, you know, my legs get a little bit jelly-like and I think, should I approach that person or not?

I think it was a question, how much do you have to hate somebody? And as I said, I think that’s a far more biblical perspective than what some believers have when they say, well, no, I’m not going to tell you. And listen, I’m not saying that you have to be the guy on the street corner, standing on a milk crate with a sandwich board.

I’m not that guy. I’m not that confrontational about anything in life. But we should be looking for opportunities to share the gospel with people.

And God has wired each of us differently to do that differently and approach people differently. And it’s all important. But one of the most important jobs we’ve been given as believers is this call to evangelize that we’re going to talk about this morning.

We’ve been going through a list of spiritual disciplines, things that God has called us as believers to do and to practice and to do on purpose because they aid in our spiritual walk. And I’ll tell you, the more evangelistic we are, the more we learn to rely on God because it can be scary at times. The more we learn to rely on God because we don’t always have the right words, because we don’t always know who to approach and who not to, the more evangelistic we’re trying to be, it does develop our faith in God and our walk with Him.

but evangelism is one of these spiritual disciplines that helps us grow. But this is one of the spiritual disciplines that we practice that also has a practical benefit for people outside of the church because we are introducing people to Jesus Christ. So this morning we’re going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

If you turn there with me and your Bibles, we’re going to read that in just a second. And once you find it, if you’d stand as we read together from God’s word, If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find 2 Corinthians 5, it’s on the screen. It’s also in your bulletin this morning.

And we’re going to look at the final four verses of this chapter, starting in verse 18. Here’s what the Apostle Paul says. Now, all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us.

We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. You may be seated.

In the preceding parts of this chapter, in what comes before this, the Apostle Paul was talking to the church at Corinth that was hopefully a little older and a little wiser than they were when he had to straighten them out in his first letter. And he was talking about what it means to live for Christ in a world that is hostile toward Christ. And he talks about how we are longing for the day when we’re reunited with Christ. He talks about the work that Christ does in us through his Holy Spirit. He talks about the changes that are being accomplished in us.

And then he comes to verse 18 and says, all these things are gifts from God. All these things are things that God is doing in us. When we see that at the very beginning of verse 18, we back up to the previous parts of the chapter and see all of this stuff that’s going on in us, all this spiritual growth is from God.

He’s the one responsible. And he attributes it to the God who reconciles us to himself through Christ. And he begins to talk about what we do as a response to what Christ is doing in us as we live in a world that’s alienated from him, as we live in a world that’s hostile toward him. I ask you, does that sound familiar?

Does that sound like any place we live in? Maybe it’s maybe we delude ourselves sometimes because where we live is still somewhat Bible Belt ish. But if you compare it to where it was even 20 years ago, certainly 50 years ago, the world has grown more hostile.

You can go to other parts of our country, and it’s definitely more hostile toward them. The world that Paul was writing about is not so different from the world that we live in. And so what he told them about their response says a lot about what our response should be.

And as he comes to the end of this chapter, part of the response, a big part of the response that we have toward this world around us is evangelism. Our response to a world that’s hostile toward Jesus Christ is not to retreat from it. It’s not to form our little huddles and wait for the end.

It’s to evangelize. And what that word means is simply to share the gospel. It comes from the Greek word for the gospel, for good news.

We’re gospelizing the world. We’re sharing the message of the gospel with a world that needs to hear it. And there’s a few reasons that this passage outlines about why evangelism is so important, why it’s such a vital spiritual discipline.

And the first of these we see in verse 18 is that evangelism is the expected result of our spiritual transformation. As we look at what God is doing in us, as we look at the transformation that takes place in us once we are reconciled to the Father through the Son, and then the Spirit takes up residence within us, as we look at this spiritual transformation that takes place in the life of a believer, evangelism is something that we ought to expect as a result of that. He says, now all these things are from God that’s talking about the changes that are taking place in our lives.

It’s all the work of God. He says that the God that’s making those changes in you is the God who reconciled us to himself through Christ. And there are a lot of things we can say about the gospel. But I think this idea of reconciliation is one of the most beautiful pictures we can convey to people.

Because we use phrases like getting saved. We use phrases like believing. We use phrases like putting our trust in.

And there’s nothing wrong with any of those phrases. Those are all biblical phrases. But sometimes people can misunderstand what we’re talking about.

And this idea of reconciliation, we know what that means. And sometimes we know how difficult it is to come by. How many people in our world, how many people even in this room are walking around with broken relationships?

And oftentimes what we’re longing for is reconciliation in those. Well, the picture that the gospel paints is that you and I were in a broken relationship with God. He created us for his glory.

He created us for his pleasure. He created us to have a relationship with him. Like Brother Rick was talking to the little kids about.

God didn’t create us because he needed us. He created us because he loved us and wanted us. Sort of like my children.

I didn’t need them. I didn’t need them to be born, but I wanted them. And now that they’re here, I want them and I love them.

And God, listen, I didn’t know what handfuls my children were going to be, each in their own way. All five of them completely different. I didn’t know what handfuls they were going to be.

We can back it up a generation. My parents didn’t know what a handful I was going to be. God knew exactly what a handful you were going to be, and he loved you anyway and created you anyway.

Because God desired that fellowship. And when God created man for that fellowship, he gave us everything we could need and almost everything we could desire. And yet he said, there’s this one thing over here I don’t want you to do.

And it was never about the fruit itself. There was nothing about that fruit, as far as I know, I could be wrong in this, but as far as I know, there was nothing about that fruit that had the power to change them spiritually. It was the rebellion in their hearts that led them to eat the fruit.

And when we were faced with a God who knew how difficult we were going to be and loved us anyway, loved us enough to create us anyway, and wanted us to have fellowship with him and walk with him, that God, in the face of that God who created us and gave us everything we needed, we still said, no, I want my own way. I want to do the opposite of what you say. We wanted to rebel against that.

The downside of free will. And it didn’t stop at the fruit. That rebellion took root in Adam and Eve, and it’s been passed down to each of us like a bad gene, where it’s in our nature to rebel.

It’s in our nature to rebel against God. It’s in our nature to rebel against any kind of authority. That’s why we as children test boundaries.

That’s why we as adults test boundaries. And see, it’s not as simple as we didn’t do what God wanted us to do. In embracing sin, we embraced everything that is the opposite of who God is.

That’s why our sin is so offensive to God, because God is holy. Sin is against his nature. And so we’re saying we don’t want you, we want the opposite.

It’s like looking at God and saying, I don’t want anything that you’re about. I don’t want anything you stand for. That’s a pretty big obstacle in the relationship.

And it doesn’t matter how many good religious things we do from here on out. It doesn’t matter how moral the world out there acts. It will never be enough to erase that obstacle of that rebellion, that natural inclination to reject God.

And yet we need to be made right with him somehow. And we can’t do it. A price has to be paid.

That sin has to be dealt with. That sin has to be punished. And you and I can take the punishment.

We earned it after all. We can take the punishment. We can endure the separation.

We can try to pay the price and never succeed. But it means remaining separated from the God who loves us. God took the initiative God the Father formulated a plan God the Son agreed to it and came willingly to take responsibility for my sins and yours the whole reason he became a man the whole reason he became human flesh was to walk among us and live a sinless life so that he could be the perfect sacrifice and when verse 21 says he who knew no sin became sin for us that’s talking about him taking the responsibility for our sins on himself and he was nailed to the cross and he shed his blood taking every bit of the punishment that you and I deserved.

So that that punishment could be meted out by a holy and just God. And a loving God could show forgiveness. It just happens to be the same God.

And now God offers a welcome back into his presence, back into relationship and fellowship with him. God has made a way of reconciliation through Jesus Christ. You and I can be right with God because of what Jesus Christ did. That’s the gospel.

Jesus was crucified for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians.

And as he told the church at Ephesus, for by grace are you saved. Not because you earned it, but because God is gracious. For by grace are you saved through faith.

And not of yourselves, it’s the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. So if you’re a believer this morning, if you’re somebody who’s trusted in Christ as your one and only Savior, You realize you can’t make yourself right with God. You can’t erase those sins.

You can’t change the past. But that sin has to be punished. And you believe that Jesus was punished in your place. You believe he took all the punishment and rose again to prove it.

And you’ve asked for his forgiveness. Then you’ve been reconciled to God. You’re right with God because of the sacrifice Jesus has made.

And then to those, Paul says in verse 18, he gave us the ministry of reconciliation. It’s the natural result that once we’ve been reconciled to God, and once we realize how incredible that is, what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, once we understand the magnitude of that reconciliation, it should be second nature then for us to go and tell people about it. Have you ever found something incredible that you couldn’t wait to tell other people about?

I have. I look around the room and I see several of you that I’ve talked. Charlie and I found a little burger place in Antlers called Burger Barn.

It literally is a couple of sheds up against the highway that we kind of prayed and went in and ate the first time. And it was glorious. And now anytime somebody in this building says, oh, we’re passing through Antlers, I tell them exactly where to find these hamburgers.

Because they’re so incredible. I got to tell somebody. We’ve all found things that we think are incredible that we can’t wait to tell somebody about.

By the way, if you want to know, I’ll let you know after church. But Jesus and what he’s done for us is even more incredible than this. It’s our nature to want to tell somebody about the incredible thing we found.

We just have to get over our socialization of thinking that because it’s about Jesus, because it’s about spiritual things, it’s awkward. I’m going to hurry through this. I’m still on point one.

Evangelism spreads a message that our world desperately needs. Verse 19 tells us this. It tells us namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

The world needs to know that that reconciliation is not limited to the people in the church building. But he was reconciling the world to himself. I think sometimes the world looks at us and thinks, you know, they’re Christians.

They just act better, or at least they think they act better. They think they are better. I can’t live up to that.

Listen, none of us were living godly lives before Jesus Christ. We might have been doing outward morality, but none of us were right with God before Jesus Christ. We were all in that world that had to be reconciled to himself. Just like the people outside these walls are part of the world, the sinful world that Jesus has reconciled to God. The world needs to hear that Jesus bore the judgment, not just for the church people, but he bore the judgment for the people out there.

No matter what their sin is, no matter how far they’ve strayed from God, they can be right with him. That’s a message the world desperately needs to hear. Not that they can be good as us, not that they can become us, but that they can be right with God.

Because it says in verse 19, not counting their trespasses against them. The world needs to know that sin is a trespass against God. Never look at the forgiveness of God and think it means that sin is unimportant or that it doesn’t matter.

Sin is a very grave matter. That’s why reconciliation is needed. If our sin was okay with God, if it was okay with God to do things the scriptures say not to do, then we wouldn’t need to be reconciled to God.

All of this would be moot. But it is an offense against God. And yet, because of what Jesus Christ did, God is willing to not hold those sins against us anymore.

Not because they stopped being a big deal. Not because it’s 2024 and the world has moved on and God decided it’s not a big deal, but because Jesus Christ paid for it. And if we are willing to put our trust in him and recognize that that sin is sin and it separates us from him and willing to recognize that Jesus Christ paid for all of it and ask for that forgiveness, we’ll have it. The world needs to understand that God is holy, but God is also forgiving.

And there again, at the end of this verse, he tells us again, he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. He has entrusted us with the responsibility of making that message known because the world desperately needs to hear it. I think a lot of people reject the gospel who understand it just fine and don’t want to turn loose of their sin.

I don’t want to acknowledge their sin. But I also think that there are a lot of people in our community who have rejected the gospel without actually having understood the gospel. Because I think for a lot of people, they understand the message of Christianity to be do better, try harder.

And in reality, the message of Christianity is that your sins are a huge deal. Because of what Jesus Christ has done, God has chosen not to hold them against you. The world desperately needs to hear that. Third of all, evangelism is the calling of every believer.

Verse 20. He says we are ambassadors for Christ. That means we have been called, we have been given an appointment. Being an ambassador is a big deal. Being an ambassador means you represent one country to another.

And I think with everything going on in our world, we understand how putting the wrong person in a role like that could cause all kinds of chaos. Because it seems like all kinds of countries are just on a hair trigger ready to go to war. An ambassador has to be somebody you can trust. Being called to be an ambassador is a big deal. And that’s not for us to say, well, if it’s such a big deal, I can’t do it.

No, it’s saying it’s a big deal, so take it seriously. For us to be called ambassadors for Christ, we have been put, you as a believer, have been put in a position of responsibility. Oh, no, no, that’s just for the pastor.

That’s just for the church leadership. No, you are an ambassador for Christ. I didn’t sign up for that. Yeah, you did.

Should have read the fine print. If you’re a believer, you have been put in a position of awesome responsibility to represent Jesus Christ. We serve him. We represent him.

We advance his agenda. That’s part of the role of an ambassador, to go to another group of people, sometimes that’s hostile and argue for the perspective of the government, the king, whoever that sent you. We as believers have an incredible responsibility of going to this world and arguing.

When I say arguing, I don’t mean like fighting. I just mean advancing a point of view of the king who called us to be that ambassador. We are ambassadors for Christ. Listen to this.

This is incredible. As something the Bible said and the teacher said, you just think you speak for God, don’t you? He said, no, no, of course not.

Well, I was wrong. We do speak for him. Sometimes we get it wrong.

So we need to be very careful about how we speak for him. But when it comes to sharing the gospel, it says here, it’s as though God were making an appeal through us. We have been called to speak on his behalf.

And when we call sinners to trust Christ, and that shouldn’t be, I mean, our sin is offensive, but it shouldn’t be offensive to call the world sinners because we call ourselves the same thing. But when we’ve been called to call other sinners to trust in Christ and be reconciled to God, that’s not us making that offer. That’s not me saying, you know, I really shouldn’t do this without checking with the manager, but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.

I don’t have that authority. But when we stand on the authority of what he’s revealed in his word and we go to a lost world and say, you can be forgiven. You can be right with God.

You don’t have to jump through all these religious hoops to do it. You don’t have to check all these boxes to do it, but you have to recognize that you’ve sinned, and you need to go to the one who died to pay for your sins and ask his forgiveness. You need that forgiveness that he offers, and when we tell somebody what Jesus Christ did and tell them about the salvation that’s been offered, he is making that appeal through us.

That’s an awesome responsibility, but it’s also reassuring to know that it doesn’t depend on me. He’s the one making the appeal. I wish I’d recognized that much earlier. I put way too much stress on myself to come up with exactly the right words.

And he ends verse 20 by saying, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. We represent him to this world with a passion and a zeal because we understand, like the man said in the video, we understand the reality of heaven and hell, at least as it’s been revealed in scripture. We’ve not experienced it, but we believe what it says.

And on the basis of that knowledge, we plead with sinners. There’s one Puritan writer who talked about preaching being like a dying man to dying men, and our job is to plead with the world to be reconciled to Jesus Christ. It’s the calling of every believer. And then finally this morning, evangelism is an effort to glorify our Lord.

Now this is important to remember because as you share the gospel, there are going to be times nobody is moved by it in that moment. You may have planted a seed, but you don’t see it come to fruition then. Listen, if you’ve shared the gospel, if you’ve explained what Jesus Christ did so that we can be reconciled to God, you’ve brought him glory.

And if you’ve done nothing else, that’s enough. Now we rejoice if somebody trusts Christ as their savior, obviously. The Bible says that the angels rejoice over that.

But you can’t beat yourself up if you’ve been obedient and you’ve brought glory to Jesus Christ and somebody doesn’t respond the way you want to. You’ve done your job. Because he ends this with verse 21, talking about Jesus and who he is and what he’s done.

But the father made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. Jesus Christ, the sinless son of God, came and became sin for us. He took responsibility for all of our sins, past, present, and future.

And he paid for it in his blood so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. I saw a video on social media last week. There are some interesting pages that you can follow.

I think you have a stomach for it. One of them is called Bad Sermons, and it’s my life goal to never end up on here. There’s another one called Woke Preacher Clips that I’m in no danger of ending up on.

And I think it was from that one that this lady got up and was preaching about how we need to change our understanding of the gospel because it’s so transactional. She kept using that word, it’s so transactional. It’s just like a transaction. What do you want it to be? God took away your sin you couldn’t get rid of.

Jesus took away your sin that you couldn’t get rid of, took it, put it away from you, and then in return gave you his righteousness. I don’t care if you feel like that’s too transactional. That’s a pretty good trade, right? That’s the best trade deal in the history of all trade deals ever.

If salvation is transactional, praise the Lord that he has taken away my sin and given me the righteousness of Christ instead. Because if you’re a believer, that means God looks at you, and he knows who you are. Don’t think he’s ever forgotten.

He chooses not to remember our sins. He knows who we are, but he chooses when he looks at us to see not the sin, not the rebellion, not the filth. He chooses to look at us and see the righteousness of Christ. Thank God, because I would much rather stand before him robed in the righteousness of Christ than my own sin.

he became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And when we spread that message of who Jesus Christ is and what he’s done, there are a few things that happen. Number one, others are invited to Christ, which is incredibly important.

If we believe heaven and hell are real, and if we believe that they are eternal, then absolutely we want to invite people to trust Jesus Christ. Second of all, we’re reminded of what he did, and we need to be reminded of what he did. We sing songs about how we need to hear that old, old story again, because the reminder of the gospel and keeping our minds on the gospel keeps us close to him, keeps us walking with him. We’re reminded of what he did.

And ultimately, Jesus is glorified. If you walk out of here with nothing else to, I hope you walk out of here thinking, I need to tell somebody about Jesus. But if you only walk out of here with one thing today, I hope it’s, Lord Jesus, I can’t believe what you did for me.

I hope that you walk out of here glorifying him for what he did, because Jesus paid the ultimate price so that you could be forgiven. That’s an incredible message to share with the world, and when we do it, he is glorified.